


Willows

by Measured



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Pre-Canon, Present Tense, Skinny Dipping, Summer, Teenagers, Underage Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/pseuds/Measured
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucia slips her shift over her head, and there's the last traces of peeled skin from a sunburn on her back that vanishes as she slips into the water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Willows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moontyger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/gifts).



> Thanks to J for the beta.

Lucia slips her shift over her head, and there's the last traces of peeled skin from a sunburn on her back that vanishes as she slips into the water. This is the only place where it's cool enough to be bearable. Geoffrey, ever the gentlemen, left it to them. Poor Geoffrey has been positively burning up in his thick armor, but he's been resisting the urge to take it off. To him, his training as a knight is above everything, especially personal comfort. When she comes out, she will plead for him to take off his armor, just this once, for her sake.

Lucia's hair is swept up into a loose, messy bun. It's been so for days while her back heals, though the skin has mostly healed. She looks older, classier, like she's already left Elincia behind and become an adult, a lady full of poise and her own innate elegance. Elincia's hair has been braided and pinned up on her head to keep it away from the water, but she doesn't achieve the casual, messy elegance that Lucia exudes with a loose bun.

This isn't a lovely pool, deep and glittery and full of possible magic and myths for a young girl's mind, but a small, inglorious pond. A frog hops away, making an indignant _chireep_ as Elincia follows. The water is just barely beyond lukewarm, and with the cool breeze to her back, for the first time she feels almost comfortable through this heat. The other side of the pond is filled with rushes and algae, blocking out the view and hiding so very many creatures. Frogs chirp and croak to each other, water gliders skate past, causing ripples in the water. She remembers peeling away the brown side of the cattail cotton and spreading the seeds to the wind last year. They lingered on the wind for a while before spinning away, up, up and out of sight.

Elincia tries to keep her feet afloat, out of the mud. She hopes there aren't leeches. She reaches for Lucia's hand, as if merely clinging to her will keep the leeches away.

This side is shaded by several willows, with long branches which seem to dance in the wind. She hears a birdsong, and looks up. There's a Red-winged Blackbird up there, perched for a moment. It alights and flies onwards, convening with what can only be its mate.

Lucia breaks their silence. "I'm never going to marry."

Elincia turns to her. "But why ever not?"

"Because it is the path I have chosen. I will be no man's wife," she says. There is a hardness to her blue eyes, a determination like refined steel.

Marriage has always been an expectation for Elincia. She is noble, it is her duty to marry, to bear children, or so everyone has told her. She's never considered it much, as there's games of tag to play and seeds to let to the wind, to say nothing of the training and swordplay. Adulthood and royal duties seem so very far away, as if the world of this villa is a world of its own, its own country of endless golden days.

"Would it be so bad?" Elincia says. "I mean, our children could play together—"

Lucia shakes her head. "I've made my choice."

And Elincia knows, that once Lucia has made her choice, there is no going back. Lucia is as stubborn as Geoffrey is pliant and willing to compromise–at least when it isn't about duty. She smiles at the thought of Geoffrey with his face flushed, refusing to come in from the heat or take off his armor, as if it would besmirch his honor as a knight to take with the training pikes once and leave behind his armor.

They are alike in this way, equally stubborn and devoted to duty, devoted to her.

Elincia pulls up her leg, lays it over Lucia's to keep from the horrible mucky bottom of the pond.

"Can't you tell me? It can't be that big of a secret, you tell me _everything_ ," Elincia says.

Lucia does not answer immediately. She stares out across the pond, her jaw set in that stubborn way. She hears the drone of insects, the flutter of wings from more birds than she can identify. A blue heron flies over with a fish in its mouth–not the laguz kind, she thinks. She's never seen a laguz heron, for they are far beyond the reaches of this world of the villa, but she'd like to one day.

"It's because...I'll answer to no one but you," Lucia says.

"Lucia?"

"I value your opinion more than any man's. If my husband told me to not fight for you, I would disobey him. If the king ordered me down, I couldn't listen....that's why," Lucia says.

The thought of any man trying to order Lucia around almost makes her giggle. There is a determination within her that no one can tame, and the thought of her becoming a knitting busybody like governess is absurd.

Elincia can't help but giggle; the mental images are just too silly.

Lucia frowns. "This isn't a joke, I mean every word of it."

"I know, I know—It's just the thought of you—you _knitting_ —"

Elincia breaks into giggles again.

"Knitting? Wherever would you get that idea? I'm horrid at embroidery and the other domestic crafts," Lucia says.

Elincia covers her mouth with her other hand, and forces herself to stifle the giggles away. "I'm sorry, Lucia, I wasn't laughing at _you_ , just the thought of you being domestic was so very funny. I'm honored to hear that you care so much about me."

"Honored?" Lucia says. "It should be a given."

"But it is an honor. Your esteem is not won easily," Elincia says.

"I pay fealty only to the best," Lucia says, her gaze not leaving Elincia's.

Elincia feels something pulsing in her, like an awakening.

"Then I know what to do—" Elincia says suddenly. Her heart beats faster with every word. Even the touch of their hands, the skimming brush of their legs makes her feel like all the summer heat is buried deep under her skin.

"What?" Lucia says, a tremor in her voice.

"I don't want you to be a spinster," Elincia says.

"A _spinster,_ " Lucia says incredulously. "I'd be no _spinster._ I'd be a warrior, a woman who chose to be alone."

"— _Marry me!_ Choose to be with me! That way our children can still play together, we'll never be apart, and you won't have to go and be alone ever again."

Elincia holds tight to Lucia's hand, more aware of her now than ever before in the wake of the stunned silence. Her graceful neck, her lithe body with all those scars from practice, the solidity of laying near her and feeling like she's never known anyone to be as close, a second half.

"I....would want nothing more," Lucia says. She clasps Elincia's hand tight beneath the murky surface of the pond. Around them, birds fly up, and she wonders if they were startled away by the sound of her heart. It must be frightfully loud.

"I...I don't quite remember how these are done. With a ring, I think. And something about a dowry?" Elincia says.

"It doesn't matter," Lucia says. And she's impossibly close, their hands still entwined. Elincia's heart is doing flips in her chest as Lucia leans in, her hand wet with pond water as she traces a line over Elincia's cheek.

"Lucia...."

The first brush of Lucia's lips against hers takes her unaware. She leans in closer, close enough to feel her chest brush against Lucia's. Nudity has never been an issue between them before, there has always been a large absence of shyness. But that simple touch makes her blush.

The tender thread of connection is broken when she momentarily loses her balance and ends up in the muck. She feels something brush her foot, and it isn't Lucia. She pulls back suddenly, flailing away from the disgusting creatures.

"The leeches! _There's leeches on me_!" Elincia shrieks.

Lucia helps hoist her out, and the grassy side of the pond, Elincia tries to catch her breath. She can't bear to look at her feet, her legs where she's just sure thousands of the creepy black things are stuck on.

"There's no leeches," Lucia murmurs.

"I'm sorry, I really ruined it, didn't I? I thought I felt something crawling on me...." Elincia says. "C-can I have a do-over?"

Lucia smiles and leans down closer. Her hair is all messy and askew, falling out of the bun from every angle. She's lithe and beautiful, almost in a trance of fascination, Elincia reaches out to touch her, and pulls back her hand as if she's been burned. Lucia takes her hand and places it again to her waist, and draws nearer and nearer. On solid ground, and far away from the creepy crawlies, she can lean in and not worry about falling, at least not into water. Lucia's eyes look like a reflection of the sky. The second kiss is exquisite, everything the first wasn't. Gentle and soft, her hands resting at just below Lucia's shoulder blades. She wants the world to be this perfect moment, held in glass for all time. When they break apart for air, she gets up and pulls her white frock back over her head before laying down in the grass with Lucia. Lucia's shift clings to her skin from wetness, but Lucia as usual, cares little for such things.

She lays her head upon Lucia's shoulder. "You look so very pretty."

Lucia says nothing, just kisses her forehead. The breeze is cool here, the summer heat seems far off, a distant mirage, except where its embedded inside her skin, beating like drums and the buzzing of bees until her mind is filled with nothing but happiness and Lucia, which are to her, little more than a different name for the same word.

– 

And a mini mix to go with it:  
[Enya - Flora's Secret](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKFIlO8KBlo)  
[Enya - Wild Child](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkk0puI6NfA)  
[Yiruma - Joy](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jei1wVbP-II)  
[Enigma - Return To Innocence](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rALVgdoMHk)


End file.
